Due to the proliferation of the Internet and the wide availability of technology providing access to the Internet, many services that were once available only through traditional “bricks and mortar” service providers are now being provided over the Internet. For example, electronic marketplaces (“e-marketplaces”) now serve as intermediaries between buyers and sellers that may be located across the world from one another and communicate using the Internet. Two popular types of e-marketplaces currently in use are business-to-business (“B2B”) and business-to-consumer (“B2C”) marketplaces. E-marketplaces generally eliminate inefficiencies typical of traditional marketplaces by aggregating offerings from many sellers and by matching buyers and sellers in an exchange or auction. For buyers, e-marketplaces reduce purchasing costs by providing access to numerous sellers of a good or service and thus increasing competition between sellers. For sellers, e-marketplaces reduce costs by providing greater access to buyers and by reducing traditional capital investments (for example, investments in retail outlets).
However, although e-marketplaces provide many advantages over traditional marketplaces, inefficiencies still exist due to the need, in order to satisfy all the service needs of users, for each e-marketplace to provide a wide range of services or for users to contact multiple e-marketplaces to obtain the needed services. If an e-marketplace attempts to offer a wide range of services, many of these services may fall outside the core offering or “core competency” of the particular e-marketplace, and therefore are not provided most efficiently through that e-marketplace. For example, a B2C e-marketplace that serves as an intermediary between buyers and sellers of automobiles may provide an efficient method for sellers of automobiles to advertise and provide details about their automobiles and to enter into contracts for sale of the automobiles with buyers. However, this same e-marketplace may also provide automobile insurance services to the buyers, even though it may not be capable of providing such services in an efficient manner (since it has been designed to focus on automobile sales, has been designed without appropriate expertise, or for any other reason). Furthermore, this insurance service may be duplicative of insurance services provided through other e-marketplaces. Alternatively, the e-marketplace may not provide any insurance services, creating the need for the buyer to contact another e-marketplace or a traditional marketplace to obtain the needed insurance. These and other deficiencies have made previous e-marketplaces inadequate for the needs of many users.